North Korean leader attends funeral

SEOUL, South Korea — A number of North Koreans, including leader Kim Jong Un, attended a funeral for a top official, state media reported Monday, as the country maintained the much-disputed claim that its suspected coronavirus outbreak is subsiding.

North Korea’s state media said Monday that 2.8 million people have fallen ill due to an unidentified fever but only 68 of them died since late April, an extremely low fatality rate if the illness is covid-19 as suspected.

North Korea has limited testing capability for that many sick people, but some experts say it is also likely underreporting mortalities to protect Kim from political damage.

The official Korean Central News Agency said Kim attended the funeral Sunday of Hyon Chol Hae, a Korean People’s Army marshal who played a key role in grooming him as the country’s next leader before Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, died in late 2011.

A bare-faced Kim Jong Un carried Hyon’s coffin. Kim and hundreds of masked soldiers and officials also bowed before Hyon’s grave, state TV footage showed.

The Norths’ ongoing outbreak was likely caused by the April 25 military parade and related events that drew large crowds of people who wore no masks.

North Korea maintains a nationwide lockdown and other stringent rules to curb the virus outbreak.

KCNA said Monday that 167,650 new fever cases had been detected in the past 24-hour period. It said one more person died and that the fever’s fatality rate was 0.002%.

Experts question the North’s tally, given North Korea’s 26 million people are mostly unvaccinated and about 40% are reportedly undernourished.